The church, ekklesia, means being called out. We are
a people called into the world to speak public truth. Here are three key ideas
or concepts from The Evangelizing Church, which speak to this reality.
The authors claim, the
church is being called out into the world to speak public truth (90). However,
the images that the authors use to describe what this calling looks like are striking
in one regard…they don’t involve speech.
- Congregations are being called out of their comfort zones.
- They are being called out to be the people of God for the sake of the world.
- They are being called to live in, with, and among the world for which Christ died. (90)
We still cling to evangelism as a spoken truth which is precisely what has kept us from evangelizing effectively in the recent past.
The most important concepts that I find in The Evangelizing
Church are highlighted on pages 109-110 under the heading Three-Dimensional
Engagement. The three dimensions include; the church must embody the Truth of
our claims, we must deliberately use the images and symbols of our faith, and
the church must embrace mystery.
Let’s start by examining what it means to embody the Truth. I
work with youth and young adults and the most effective part of my ministry is teaching
them how to be a community of believers. Our group rises or falls instantly based
on our ability to embody our truth that in Christ, we are all made one. Young
people (and I think a growing number of older people) are very attuned
to hypocrisy. If we say that we are made one, but fail to let newcomers run
coffee hour the way that suits them, they notice. If we say that Christ is for everyone,
but we lock rooms in the church so that no one will go in them, they notice. If
we say that Christ is for them, but we refuse to hold the group to high
standards for behavior, they notice. If we claim that our church is about a
relationship with our Creator and Redeemer and then shy away from nurturing
relationships with others, they notice.
All of this is internal and only part of the missional
story, but it is incredibly important. “For the postmodern generation that
distrusts rational explanations, the claims of the gospel are evaluated in
terms of the character of the believing community (109).” People want evidence
of what we believe, not just our words. Since we profess that Christ calls us
to such high ideals, our very lives depend on how we treat each other and how
we treat our neighbors. More on authentic community.
The second key concept in this section highlights the need
to embrace the images and symbols of our faith. Last week I called out baptism
as an important image (sacrament) for this very reason...we can talk all we like
about theology and doctrine when we are in Seminary and among peers, but the
vast majority of the people we engage within our ministries will have no idea about
such concepts. They will at best be intimidated by such talk and at worst
alienated. We can however grab hold of the images that grab hold of us.
The authors do not deal with this at length in this section,
but they struggle with it elsewhere, specifically in the section I shared last
week (46) and (124-126). “Notice that the church is nothing other than a
community that is defined by life-giving relationships –with the three persons
of the Trinity, and thereby among the members of the body of Christ (126).”
In class, my small group was asked to describe how the Trinity is
talked about in the life of our congregations, we struggled to think of
examples. I forget the exact wording of the question, but I remember that we all
paused to think about it before we answered. Our responses were all stories of how the Trinity was being lived out amongst the community of believers. We
had specific examples of how the Trinity was embodied in our congregations but no
examples of doctrinal conversations we’ve had with other members.
The third concept outlined in this section of The
Evangelizing Church is mystery. It is interesting how churches want to cling to
certainty as a way to point to the Truth, when the Bible finds all sorts of
ways to show us that those who embrace mystery, miracles, and paradox are all more
likely to find it.
But what is truth? We
cannot prove Christ is God. That is the exact argument that people give for not
believing. And yet, as Christians, we profess “Christ is God” as truth! This is
the paradox of our faith. It is impossible to know that Christ is God in order
to believe and it is impossible to know that Christ is God without belief. At
the very moment we suspend our desire for certainty and lay hold of the claim
that Christ is Lord, we can believe and in our belief we may have certainty
that Jesus Christ, Son of God, is our Lord and Savior. This faith in Christ
binds us together in the Church and drives our mission to tell the world the
good news.
Mystery, the kind that is offered to us in Jesus Christ, has
profound impact on how we approach other conversations in the church, conversations about creation, sin, taking up
your cross, election, and mission, to name a few. This last summer on my senior
high mission trip to Boulder, CO we spent a good portion of our time talking
about mystery as a way to engage the environmental mission field we were
studying. Within our small community, we started to discover all of the
wonderful reasons why mystery is a gift from God. Based on those conversations
I created a personal reflection journal which is being used by another church
to start a more intentional youth community. The fifth reflection in this
journal asks the questions; Why would God choose to be so mysterious? What is
it about mystery that serves us better than telling us exactly what is going
on?
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This thoughtful atheist nearly perfectly describes in his critique of church doctrine, my faith as a Christian (how throwing off certainty is key to faith). I do disagree with some of his assumptions about the church and its doctrine, but he is helpful in articulating how the world sees Christianity and I embrace his arguments as critically important.
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